The literacy of sharing a world

NICSUN already gave us "Literacy in Politics." That put a new twist to a thought I've had for some time: that many people from majority or socially/politically/economically dominant groups have never learned to look at things from any other point of view, and have been educated to regard their own dominance as the right and natural order of the world. Any tipping of the balance, any leveling of the field that reduces the automatic supremacy of the dominant group is unfair, artificial, and part of an evil conspiracy.

Recently, I see this most glaringly from defenders of the Arizona immigration law, and the Tea Partiers. In the first case, many white "Conservative" Americans simply cannot believe there's an objection. "It's only against illegals!", they assure me, and can't imagine why anyone would think this law might impact legal immigrants, or even American citizens, who speak the same language or have the same skin color as those "illegals." I think we can say, with confidence, that Arizona would never have passed a law requiring white people to carry around documentation (documentation most Americans don't even possess) to produce any time a police officer demanded proof of citizenship. First of all, the majority of Arizona's voters would never subject themselves to harassment and humiliation like that. Second, well everyone just knows that white people are citizens, right?; it's non-whites who have to be individually scanned for alien status. Supporters, willfully or otherwise, blind themselves to the racial dynamic and the past and present reality of law enforcement's interaction with minority communities and claim that latinos who are here legally have nothing to fear from the law.

My second example, the one tied to the image above (or any of thousands of egregious signs that proliferate at Tea Party rallies), is the astonishing conviction held by some members of traditionally privileged groups in this country that they are getting a bad deal, that they are victims, that minorities are getting special advantages and taking over the country. This is an old, old refrain in America, dating back at least to the Civil War and white fears of "Negro Rule," as if weakening the institution of slavery or any advances toward basic citizenship and equality for African Americans meant that they'd grind whites in the dust. You see this today, with white conservatives (and, in 2008, Gloria Steinem!) denouncing Affirmative Action and the election of Barack Obama as proof that black Americans have things too easy and white people just can't catch a break anymore. Realistically, whatever disadvantages whites might suffer from Affirmative Action don't begin to override the benefits whites have received (for most of us unwillingly, unwittingly, without intent or understanding of the structural forces pushing us towards the top and others down) from our nation's racial caste system. Certainly, the election of the first non-white president can hardly spell the end of white success in America, especially when Congress, the media, the electorate, the business community, and the president's staff (from Joe Biden on down) are overwhelmingly white. Similarly, every year like clockwork Fox News warns us about a War On Christmas because some retailers have seen fit to ask their employees (who are not all Christian) to wish their customers (who are not all Christian) Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. To those who are accustomed to ignoring the existence of other religions it seems like a huge affront to be asked to share the holiday shopping season in this tiny way. As my final example, the "Defense of Marriage" campaign, which peaked in 2004 with a series of amendments to state constitutions and an attempt to amend the United States Constitution to "defend marriage" from gay participation. How utterly baffling that so many Americans have taken "heterosexual" as a political and cultural identity, and think that marriage would be devalued and destroyed if a small excluded section of the population were allowed to join in. What on earth gays marrying is supposed to do to marriage as it exists between straight couples remains vague, but the very fact that same sex marriages were performed would utterly devalue the concept. It seems very clear to me that the point in retaining exclusive ownership of marriage is to have someone to look down at; whatever else is going wrong in my life, at least I'm better than them. In a world where diversity is increasing in all fields and classes, this isn't a viable attitude in the long term. We have to learn to share both economic resources and social capital.

Update: As if to prove my point the Tea Party's flagship candidate, GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul, puts the "government mandate" to share space in this country with non-whites in terms of the death of freedom.

Literacy in Medicine

Literacy, both in the traditional sense of being able to read and our expanded sense encompassing virtually all technical skills and knowledge, plays a vital role in receiving medical care. At the most basic level, knowing about anatomy and basic health maintenance is crucial. For most of us, getting our teeth cleaned periodically and making at least a gesture towards exercise and eating healthy are ingrained, but they are learned behaviors. Once one enters the clutches of the medical system, both literal and expanded literacy are essential because of the reams of highly technical, both medically and legally, paperwork one must handle to receive, authorize, understand and pay for care. If one lacks the medical literacy to understand one's body and conditions, the literal literacy to understand the forms and paperwork, and the computer and research literacy to investigate, one is at the mercy of what information one overworked doctor can convey in brief, expensive face-to-face meetings.

Although I wasn't thinking in terms of Literacy per se, I witnessed the importance of medical and standard literacy last year when I was teaching in Namibia. Namibia is a new and impoverished country, having only won independence from Apartheid South Africa 20 years ago. It is also ground zero, along with neighboring Botswana, of the AIDS Crisis. AIDS medications are finally becoming available in the developing world, but taking AIDS "cocktails" properly and effectively is a very complicated and time-sensitive business, with a myriad of pills required at very specific times of day. How does this work in a country virtually without clocks, where time is vague to the point of near meaninglessness, and where people aren't accustomed to working with precision measuring and details? Where most people can't read in any language, much less the English formal instructions are almost always printed in? In rural Namibia (everywhere but the capital Windhoek), pill dosage instructions aren't given by the numerical clock (take two pills at 6am, and another two at 6pm) but with pictures: Take two pills when the sun is low in the sky! For some medication this may work, but for complicated and highly precise regimens it poses a huge obstacle.

Knitting and Mathematics

Every knitting pattern gives a gauge, or number of stitches and rows per inch, appropriate for the type of yarn and needle size used in the original pattern. The gauge is extremely important for a pattern because it tells you how many stitches to cast on and how many rows to knit for your desired garment size. I rarely use the yarn that is listed in the pattern nor do I even use a yarn similar in size to the given yarn. Because of this tendency, I am required to change the pattern in order to ensure that I am making the correct size for the garment. Therefore, I need to read and write the words, letters, and symbols of the pattern, as well as write and interpret mathematics in figuring out how many stitches to cast on, how many rows to knit, how much yarn to use, etc.

Determining gauge is also essential when making up your own patterns. Writing your own pattern again requires the reading, writing, and interpreting of mathematics as well as writing skills to write out the final pattern. I am making a blanket for my dad with a pattern that I wrote myself. He is a big fan of the University of Miami Hurricanes so I took a photo of one of their logos and ran it through a pattern generator. While this program breaks down the picture into number of stitches, I still need to figure out how big the blanket will be based on the yarn I want to use as well as the suggested needle size for that yarn. This particular pattern taken as it was generated would have made a tiny lap blanket so I needed to add in rows and stitches to widen and lengthen it as well as to make a nice border so that it was a more appropriate size. You can see all of my notes with equations and written instructions for the pattern along the margins of the picture of the logo.

While a knitter obviously needs to know physically how to knit, it is also important for a knitter to be literate in the language of the craft in order to pick apart a pattern. And it is mighty helpful to understand ratios!

Literacy in Music

This is my little sister CJ playing piano. She is 9 years old. Literacy in this photo is evident in the fact that she is indeed reading music while playing. However, literacy is also evident in the fact that she is listening to herself. She told me she can remember that she forgot to put the pedal on in the last two measures and she is able to point out her hardest measure and tell me how she is going to practice it. Music, to me, is the ultimate multi-tasking activity. They need to read the conductor (if there is one), read music (in the staff and the details that are around the staff, for instance, CJ forgot to read below the staff that the pedal should be put on in the last two measures) and it also includes listening to what you have played or evening listening to something that is in your head before you play so that when you do play it it is exactly how you imagined it. Music requires students to be literate in a completely different language, and practicing, just like CJ, makes a more literate person.

Photovoice 1

I think part of literacy in world language is being aware of the language you're expected to function in.
This means being wary of false cognates, especially in French.
A cognate is a word that is similar to a word in English.  For example, in French "la tradition" is very similar looking and sounding to the word "tradition" in English.  And since it is a cognate, that is what it means.
A false cognate is a word that looks and sounds very similar to a word in English, but it does not share a similar meaning.  For example, "chair" in French is not something to sit on.  It is basically "flesh" in English.
So, it was very important to realize the false cognate "naturaliste" when I visited this small seaside town in the south of France.  This particular town is inhabited by "les naturalistes" during the warmer months (I visited in January).  Naturalist has a different meaning in English, while in French "naturaliste" means nudest.  This bit of new vocabulary was and will be extremely helpful in the future.

Cognates and false cognates are an important part of literacy in teaching and learning world languages.

Literacy in Art

I am working on a lesson where students will design and draw a community eco art-park, then they will create a 3-d version using mixed media. This is my 3-d version. In the process of drawing thier park they create a what will be like a map key. I have been thinking about how this relates to reading a text of an object. Images are a large part our our daily lives, and many times written language is involved in comprehension. It seems extreemly important to be able to read our surroundings in order to survive and thrive. Our students will flurious in any environment if they are able to read the small information and build from there.

"Guernica" by Pablo Picasso, 1937.

Ok, I didn't take this photo, but the piece provides a lot of visual reading material as an artist. Picasso's Guernica depicts the bombing of Guernica, Spain by German and Italian forces on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. Hundreds of civilians were killed. When viewing this painting, the horrors of the incidents are immediately apparent. Not only do we see it in the mangled, stricken faces of the subjects, but also in the awkward, strained shapes and spacing, the rigid use of line, the lack of color, and the dark and dismal shade, or value, of the painting.

These elements; line, shape, form, value, color, space, are the language of art. They are what a work of art are made up of, and it is through these elements that an artist can create not only the image that he or she wants to convey, but also the underlying message or the mood of the work.

Literacy in a Changing Society

In class we discussed that ‘literacy’ can be defined as reading, writing, listening, and speaking, as well as inquiry, language study, and meaning making, but my understanding of literacy has developed and become more in line with Harste (2003) in which he states “Literacy can be thought of as a particular set of social practices that a particular set of people value” and Friere, that literacy is reading the word, and reading the world. If you look at literacy in these terms, then it is impossible to describe or define literacy without including the notion that is changes, the definition of literacy in terms of our set of social practices would be much different then 30, 50, or 100 years ago. Throughout my lifespan for example, I was not introduced to computer technology until around the middle of elementary school, in which case we used large green screen computers in the lab to play educational games, for math and spelling, it was closer to middle school when we began using computers for word processing assignments and internet research. I was also in my early teens before having a home pc was prevalent in our society, and until my generation began using personal computers for other purposes such as social networking, etc. Thus, learning how to use a computer was something that was not a necessarily a literary requirement when I first began school, but by the end of my high school career it was, I had to spend a great deal of time learning the functions, the processes, such as web browsing, keyboarding etc at a much later age then children in today’s society. My daughter Emelia, is 2 years old. Her generation of children now have entirely different literary expectations, because the use of technology and computers has now become so prominent in everyday life tasks and activities, it is essential for humans to learn and understand, “to be able to read”, computers and the internet, therefore beginning to teach these concepts at a much younger age, then 12 or 13 like I was, is a new social practice that would alter our definition of literacy. This photograph is of my two year old daughter about to skype with her grandmother (at two, she knows how to turn on the computer, use the keypad to move the cursor, click on the Skype shortcut button and she even knows which names her Nana is, she can pick a name, and click ‘video call’).

For me art is about a feeling/emotion that over comes your body. Your own built in approval system. I discover what evokes my emotions by living, reading the world around me and utilize my knowledge to form ideas and opinions that I feel need to be expresses.

These are basic ideas seen everyday in the world we roam. Some people might just miss the expressive art perspective, but still have a reaction or feeling. They are reading the world for themselves.

Art is taught mostly by doing, but ultimately the finish product is an expression of your ideas and knowledge. Ideas are converted for artists technically through art elements and principles (value, balance, line, color, texture, space, form, etc).

Do you feel anything? Can you relate to this image?

Trees

The Sound of the Trees by Robert Frost

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.

One of the ways writers read the world is through images. For as long as there have been trees, people have felt a connection to them; Robert Frost is just one of a multitude that has read the world in this way. Robert Probst, in Voices from the Middle (March, 2003), writes: "All these are acts of literacy, all these involve reading; all these involve looking at signs, interpreting codes, seeking to discover significance in an event or text, trying to figure out what the world surrounding us means for us, for our own lives, for our own happiness." I think trees mean something different for everyone; symbolically, the tree is said to denote the life of the cosmos: its consistence, growth, proliferation, generative and regenerative processes. It stands for inexhaustible life, and is therefore likened to a symbol of immortality. Who among us has not read the seasons through the appearance of a tree? Who has not sought shelter, literally and figuratively, under branches, against bark, in moments of tears, laughter, reflection? As a poet, trees figure largely into my poems for a multitude of reasons. I feel connected to trees because they are a part of my world, and are one of my connections to my place here. When I am able to translate this into text, when I can shift from the world of the living object with its canopy of branches, rough bark, and presence into the world of text - written and spoken - I am part of the literacy of the world.

-Tracy Sitterley

Writing the First Draft of History - Literacy in Observing Events

In 2004, I lived, worked and studied in Ecuador with an excellent program called HECUA. It was a very volatile time, though Ecuador like much of Latin America is in a nearly perpetual state of crisis with only brief rests when catastrophe and revolution seem to fade momentarily into the background. Ecuador is a very divided country, with the traditional lighter skinned, Spanish and now often English speaking descendants of the colonial ruling class still holding onto economic and political power, and, despite representing a tiny minority, being hugely overrepresented in culture and media.

In recent decades there has been a revival of indigenous pride and culture, as people and communities and philosophies which have been ground under foot since Columbus and the conquistadores have awoken and demanded autonomy and respect. In Ecuador, this movement is called Pachacuti, the Quechua name of an Inca king. In 2002, the newly mobilized indigenous voters allied with urban leftists and students to elect President Lucio Gutierrez. However, Gutierrez quickly betrayed his supporters and embraced the traditional elites and foreign business interests he had won power by denouncing. He instituted World Bank ordained austerity measures and converted the Ecuadorian currency from the patriotic Sucre to the American dollar. He cracked down, hard, on the student protesters and indigenous marchers who had brought him to office. In the first week of November I witnessed, photographed and was caught up in a war on the capital city of Quito's streets between the Grupo de Operaciones Especiales with their riot gear, guns and armored cars, and students with red banners and rocks and Molotov cocktails. I came home at the end of the 2004; by April 2005 President Gutierrez had been overthrown.

Making sense of this complicated and foreign scenario required many kinds of literacy. Most obviously, my ability to read and understand Spanish (much degraded since then) allowed me to understand the slogans being shouted. I knew that "Lucio sucio" meant "Dirty Lucio" and that "Quito no fue fundada por Espanoles!" is a cry of indigenous pride from the descendants of the people who were there for thousands of years before the new ruling class. Having read Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina by Eduardo Galeano, I was able to understand some of the economic history from the underclass' perspective, and why they hated Gutierrez for bowing to American interests. I was able to speak to the president of the Federación de Estudiantes Universitarios del Ecuador, the militant student union FEUE, who explained why his members where out in the street with red banners, Marxist slogans and rocks. I was able to understand the police's threats to jail, rape, murder or deport me when I was briefly kidnapped and held in an armored car during the fighting. Had I not been literate to some degree in history, in Spanish, in politics, and in basic international and domestic economics, I would have thought hell had suddenly erupted in front of the Universidad Central in Quito, and that everyone had suddenly gone mad and started fighting. It occurs to me that this is what most Americans do think when they read about third world or even inner city violence.

Literacy Sprouting

Over the past few years, my boyfriend and I have taken up gardening not only as a healthy hobby, but also as a way of decreasing our ecological footprint and enhancing our sustainability as members of our community. By growing as much produce as possible by seed, we rarely have to buy vegetables at the market between the months of May and September. Through our endeavor, we have discovered that success in gardening involves precision and incredible attention to detail, just like success in mathematics involves precision in language and procedure. Successful growing is also dependant upon the gardeners’ ability to adjust to the unpredictability of the elements in nature. Similarly, successful math learning hinges upon the students’ ability to be flexible with procedures and to critically analyze problem solving situations in order to determine an appropriate strategy for any given situation.

These parallels between math and gardening can be used to summarize some of my conclusions about the successful development of math literacy among secondary students. The acquisition of math literacy is a necessary component of success in the study of mathematics that should be stressed during earlier years of education for appropriate mathematical development through grades 2-12. As the gardener must till the soil before planting seeds, the teacher must stress mathematical literacy before productive problem solving skills can be developed. Introducing the basics of math literacy (reading, writing, listening to, talking about, and watching procedures) is not enough for the true development of literacy. Rather, some conditions must be met for students to be mathematically literate, just like specific conditions must be met for the planted seeds to flourish.

The primary element needed for seed growth is water, comparable to the math language (from content vocabulary to number proficiency) needed before applied and meaningful learning can occur. Next, the seedling takes in sunlight and nutrients, which parallels the students’ intake of teacher provided tools that enhance the development of reading, writing, listening, viewing, and speaking skills. Such tools include procedural development in conjunction with guided and practiced templates for written, spoken, and drawn communication. To advance literacy development even further, the teacher must create a respectful, safe community environment whereby students are able to practice their tools as they learn new math concepts. This is the time when teachers have the ability to enhance literacy development, rather than allow it to plateau. Similarly, the gardener has the power to encourage plant growth even further through proper fertilization and nurturing of the environment. Translating back to math, once literacy has sprouted, it must be fostered daily and yearly for meaningful math learning to take place.

The picture above depicts a variety of lettuce plants, all of which started from tiny seeds. The nature of the photograph relays another interesting parallel between math and gardening. Notice how the plants are spaced—not too far apart but not too close so that growth is hindered. In a similar manner, student development of math literacy must be balanced between guided teaching, collaborative exploration, and self-discovery. Excellence in math literacy does not occur in an isolated bubble. Students need each other to gain confidence in conjecture-making and reasoning, which correlate to the process standards intricately tied to literacy development—those of communication and problem solving. Fostering a warm environment where student voice is always valued is an essential component of teacher development of student literacy.

Gardening is not only a great metaphor for mathematical literacy development, it is also an awesome mathematical model. In fact, my friend who tutors an Algebra I class at Humbolt High School helped her students begin a gardening project last week as an application to their study of rate of change. In doing math through gardening, the retention and meaningful understanding of concepts is maximized. Relevant concepts of growth rate, dependence relations, variance, mixing, area, and perimeter can be applied to gardening. As a teacher, I will use similar projects accompanied by academic papers incorporating math concepts with the physical doing of math. This is the perfect example of how we as teachers can stimulate the development of literacy in our students while incorporating practical life lessons that promote a healthy community.

Literacy in Politics

This weekend I attended a march and rally in support of the rights of immigrants where I observed many different examples of literacy.

I was impressed, and a little overwhelmed, with the variety of political interests and organizations present. Organizers carried signs, chanted, sang songs, passed out literature, and gave soap box speeches on the street. There were signs in English, Spanish, and various Asian characters. Literacy was everywhere.

It made me think about the role of literacy in democracy. In the U.S. we no longer are required to take literacy tests in order to vote -- some were in the past. However, can you imagine participating without your literacy skills? Many of us read about various political opinions and candidates every day in newspapers, on blogs and bumper stickers, etc. Certain times of the year it may feel like we can't escape it. It can be difficult to sort fact from fiction.

Most of us are equipped with the knowledge to think critically and analytically. We are educated on how to read for signs of biases. At political events and in daily life it is important to think critically about the information you're exposed and decide what you support and what you may not. A responsible citizen is informed about the issues and doesn't blindly follow based merely on ideology.

It is important to pass that information along to future generations, so they can be responsible citizens. In the future I hope to teach students how to find information about the many different sides of controversial issues and think critically about their world so they can get out and support the causes that may be important to them.

Lyrical Literacy

Ok, so this doesn't necessarily have to do with lyrics, but I liked the alliteration. This is me and my friend, Ashley. The picture above is of her boyfriend, Troy's band, JackLaugh. (They're pretty good! You should check them out at http://www.myspace.com/jacklaugh or http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=49545262001.) The other night I went out to see JackLaugh playing at a local bar. I thought they sounded pretty good, but it was kind of hard to understand the lyrics over the music. When the band was done with their first set, Troy came over to talk to Ashley. Naturally, one of the first things he asked her was "how did we sound?" Despite the fact that I have gone to shows for friends and I know it is of no help, my response would have been something along the lines of "you sounded good!" Ashley however started talking to Troy in a much more technical way, detailing how the quality wasn't very good in the corner where we were sitting, but it was better towards the back of the room. They went on to discuss how they had sounded much better at the bar where the band performed last weekend. While Ashley and Troy were talking, I just sat and listened to them with nothing to contribute myself.

Last week I went to visit the ELL classroom at Highland Park to talk to the ELL teacher, Mr. Farstad. We talked about his students and how quickly they end up being mainstreamed after only 4 years in the ELL program. I asked him how well they did in the mainstreamed classes and we talked a little about how ELL students tend to be more quiet in the classroom because they don't always feel comfortable talking around native speakers. It can be hard to jump into a discussion with people when you are not confident that you can keep up in the conversation. Whether it has to do with fluency in the language or knowledge of the content, literacy is important to having confidence in any conversation.

Literacy in anything whether a school subject, a new language, or even understanding how differences in settings can effect how music sounds, is something that takes time and experience to gain. Just as ELL students should have around 7 years before they are mainstreamed, I just need to get more experience by going to more shows so that I can some day join in a conversation about how a band sounds in a particular venue. I'm sure JackLaugh would appreciate more fans, too, so maybe the next time I go to a show some of you can join me and we can all expand our musical literacy! 

Literacy is Everywhere

These are a couple pictures from my vocabulary lesson. While you did the activity, if you were to walk into my gym class and see this on the wall, you would know that the kids are learning vocabulary of various sports. The way I went about teaching the vocabulary incorporated literacy as well because the students would have to read the word and then work together by communicating about where the vocabulary word fit. I have been viewing literacy in physical education more about demonstration and physical doing, but reading and writing is also very important in the physical education class. Students need to be able to read about a sport to help them learn the rules and strategies of the game. It is also important that they can write about what they are doing and use the vocabulary from the unit to have success during the game. One of the tools I plan to use on a regular basis in my classroom will be a study guide that students will be required to read and understand.

When I started this class, I was one of those physical education people who was bothered by the idea that I would have to teach literacy in the my gym class. I have really changed my opinion because of my understanding of literacy. Literacy is everywhere including physical education class. There is a time and place for reading and writing in phy ed but I think that finding a way to balance everything is going to be the key to a quality classroom. I never realize how much I can incorporate literacy into my classroom while being in motion. After doing this lesson, I know that in my gym I want lots on the walls that encourages students to read without even realizing they are reading. I plan on having not only word walls, but inspirational sayings and rules of various activities posted so there is never any question as to what the expectation in my class is.

City Streets

This is a picture of my adorable little house, here in St. Paul. As I was walking home from class today, it occurred to me how different city streets look here versus city streets in Paris or France in general. In both situations, I lived in a metropolitan city. Paris, however, has a larger population in a smaller area. Despite it's large population, Paris is a small city.
Anyway, when teaching a foreign language, almost everything has to do with literacy. In most foreign language settings, students will learn vocabulary having to do with cities. They will not only learn words for specific things, like grocery stores and towers and houses and school, etc. But they will also learn how to describe the city: the closeness of the houses or buildings, the traffic, the business of the streets. Students also learn vocabulary to give directions: north, south, east, west, right, left, etc. This also seems like a clear way to incorporate culture into the vocabulary. One of the ACTFL national standards is about Comparisons. Why not use the new vocabulary that you're teaching your students to discuss how an American city is organized versus how a French (or even just European) cities are organized? This would make the vocabulary have a real life purpose. In foreign languages, teaching the vocabulary doesn't mean that the students will remember it. If you give them a real life situation or a connection to their own lives, your students are much more likely to remember what they learned. This can also help with getting your students to talk in class and use the speaking part of language learning. Plus, such comparisons are fun.

I just can't win.

I went camping this weekend with a few friends. We stayed up near Duluth at Tettegouche State Park, right on the Lake Superior shoreline.

I am currently in a class called, simply, "Color". Being in this class has afforded me a heightened awareness of color and what it is doing to the world around me. It is hard to paint you a picture with words of what I saw while camping...Two colors that I felt flooded my world this weekend were green and violet. What kind of colors are they? Everyone, in unison now: COOL colors. Very calming. My friend pointed out something as we were driving up north. Perhaps this is something that all of you have noted before, but I didn't really realize how we were stepping back in time as we headed north, in a way, to an earlier time in spring. I thought this was a lovely thought. Perhaps if we kept driving, we would never need to say goodbye to the sweet time of spring, when the colors are so fresh and bold. The yellow-green of the birch trees, with their white trunks gave way to a sky filled with chromatic violets...and then you walk near a birch tree, and you see the pealing bark that reveals a soft sunrise of colors. I greedily spent my weekend looking for these bits of bark along the path, the smooth driftwood that washed up on the shore, and memories of the colors that surrounded me. My mind swam with dreams of using these things in my art. Nature is, without a doubt, one of the most important sources of inspiration for my art. I have to admit, however, that sometimes this thing that I am studying (art) seems terribly and absolutely redundant. Art? Why on earth would I think I have any right to speak for nature, to translate, or take ownership of it in my artwork? Doesn't it speak for itself on a level that I will never be able to speak without stumbling terribly over my words?

The picture I have posted was taken by my mother a few days ago. Robin eggs sit nestled in her empty flower pot...their blue not even done justice by Crayola's Robin Egg's Blue. Sigh...